Watchmen, Tintin Tidbits. Crumbs!

A while ago I gave up reading Ain’t It Cool News. I don’t know why, maybe it was those big chunky sans-serif fonts. But I’ve come back to the fold lately, and I gotta say, they have the stuff. I hadn’t heard about this curiosity: a test-image of Rorschach from Watchmen buried in one of the 300 trailers. You can tease it out of the YouTube footage, or you could just click through to a big version. Yup, that’s Rorschach. (Not ‘Rorshach,’ as it’s spelled in the story. Maybe that’s why I stopped reading.)

There’s also a pointer to a piece in the Hollywood Reporter about Spielberg producing a Tintin movie. I honestly can’t imagine how that could be a good idea — the charm of those books seems so bound up with those gorgeously colored little print panels, and its old-Europe vibe and Britishisms (crumbs!) And its weird near-sexlessness (I could never understand what the rapacious Madame Castafiore wanted with Captain Haddock). And I never understood how Tintin could knock out crooks with those tiny little fists? And when did he file his stories — trust me, being a journalist is nothing like Tintin makes it out to be. Is all that quirky charm going to survive the Hollywood treatment? Must we take everything good and make it into an expensive movie?